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meet the maker - krmbal clothing

I have been wanting to explore a new area of the artisan world - graphic design. I feel like tee shirt and clothing designers are often overlooked as part of the artisan community despite their work and education in art and design so today, I'm introducing you to my favorite indie tee shirt designer!

Tessa Sainz is the owner and designer of Krmbal indie tee shirts! Tessa is a graphic designer that's been working
in the apparel industry ever since she landed her first serious design job.
She started out working as a production artist for a company that made a
lot of collegiate apparel and now works for a corporation. She's always
wanted to have her own indie brand and after befriending a few people
who had done it on twitter, she decided to do it herself! Krmbal opened
in July 2012 with 2 designs - Shop Indie & Heart Tree - and it has
slowly, but steadily grown since then.

Tessa
started Krmbal for many reasons. One is because she felt her current corporate
job doesn't give her much of a creative outlet and designing graphics
for her own line definitely helps fill that void. However, the other is
because being able to see behind the scenes of a corporation that makes a
lot of our clothing made her realize that so many people don't
understand that lots of waste and chemicals goes into making even the
most basic clothes they buy at big box retail, and a lot of that also
comes because people want the cheapest possible deal they can get. She
also discovered a lot of what was marketed as 'green' was actually just stuff
that sounded nice and wasn't really green at all. A lot of people might
want to buy things that were made in a more responsible fashion, but
many organic cotton t-shirts cost an awful lot. Plus, how do you know
that you're not getting greenwashed without being able to see behind the
scenes? Transparency is definitely important, but no big company is
going to be as transparent as the truly conscious consumer needs them to
be.

Tessa believed she could make an eco-conscious graphic tee that
wasn't all greenwashed marketing claims and that she could make and sell
them for a reasonable price and still explain her choices to her
consumers, so they could trust her decisions.

So, Tessa began
with a ton of research. She found a garment made by a company that
had a 3rd party come in and detail its energy usage, organic and
eco-friendly claims. She also researched the best printing technique and
even wrote an article about screen printing ink systems (and how
water-based ink isn't really any greener than plastisol, assuming both
are handled in an appropriate manner) for Impressions Magazine.

After all the
research, the hard part came in choosing a name for the business. Tessa
wanted something that represented her mission to offset some of the
things she saw in the industry from her corporate job. The biggest
driver for her to launch her business was to make her feel like she
could educate people about their apparel choices and in some small way,
balance her karma from her participation in the giant, corporate apparel
machine. She settled on Krmbal, a nonsense word made by smashing 'karma
balance' together. It might be a strange word, but it seemed to fit
when nothing else did. It also seemed to represent how Krmbal is
different from other indie brands and certainly from regular retail
apparel. There's a greater mission behind Krmbal and the customer can
trust that a lot of research and effort to find the most responsible
option has gone into their Krmbal tee. Tessa also donates $1 from every
Krmbal purchase to make Kiva loans that help people with small
businesses all over the world make their businesses more eco-friendly.
This way, Krmbal is helping create change all over the planet, on a
grassroots level.

So far the
hardest thing for Tessa has been learning how to do all the things she
doesn't normally have to do as a graphic designer. Art and printing,
that's the easy part, the hard part has been marketing, sales and
finding what resonates with her fan base. Learning from other people who
run indie shops has been super helpful!
It's also been really great just to have that community support.
Sometimes the hard part is also knowing when it's a good idea to expand
some more. Krmbal runs pretty conservatively, but Tessa says she needs to find a good
balance between investing too much in new things and boring our
customers by having no new options for a long time.

Krmbal
is actually launching two new designs right now: the Dullahan and the
Lucky Cat. The Dullahan is a scary Irish faerie known for holding its
own head and riding around the countryside looking for a person. The
story says that anyone who sees the Dullahan will get blinded by his
whip made from a human spine. The Dullahan is known as Death's Herald
because he searches for a person and when he finds them, says the name
of the person and they die soon after. Some believe the Story of Sleepy
Hollow is based on the Irish legend of the Dullahan. The other new
design is much less scary, it's a Lucky Cat or Maneki Neko, known to
bring good fortune and perhaps even wealth to people, homes and
businesses.

The existing Krmbal designs tended to go very much
toward Tessa's personal geeky interests, so having the new designs go in
two new directions - creepy and cute, is hopefully going to bring some
new customers to learn about Krmbal's message.

Let's get personal - I asked Tessa: as
a tee shirt designer, it's a very creative business - but SO many people
don't consider it an 'art' form. Do you feel like tee shirt design is an
underrated art form?

Tessa:

I
do think that t-shirt art is somewhat underrated as an art form. It's
certainly not considered highbrow and I've had many people, in a
professional sense, brush me off as a graphic designer because I work in
the apparel industry and not, for example, in web design. Personally,
I've always felt more comfortable and more artistic in media that I
could get my hands dirty in. That's what feels like art to me, not
sitting behind a computer. That's probably why I like the apparel
industry so much. I can design something on my computer and then walk
out to the print floor and be involved in the actual creation of the
thing. I'm actually a pretty big screen printing nerd and probably annoy
the printers at my day job sometimes by sticking my nose in and
suggesting things they don't want to do.

My
printer for Krmbal is pretty great though because he lets me do whatever I
want. It's a pretty cool relationship where he trusts my judgement, but
if he thinks something won't work, he'll tell me and suggest some small
change and I definitely trust him and his team to understand my vision
and work with me. I'm usually there on the press floor with them when
they print also, so even though I'm not personally loading the machines
and pushing the buttons I am right there. I like that much better than
sending the art off to a company halfway across the country and having
them print my stuff and send it back, which is how a lot of indie
t-shirt brands produce their stuff. At least they're still getting them
printed in a shop with the proper procedures for handling those
chemicals though!

There's
also a bit of a bias against t-shirts in the crafting community. I
think because there's such an emphasis there on the handmade, which is
understandable. I could hand-draw everything and hand-burn and print
screens myself, if I chose to. I have the screens and could buy the
chemicals and ink, but that's also an archaic process and not
ecologically responsible. Screen printing involves industrial chemicals
and in my opinion, printing at home without the proper containment and
disposal systems is just as bad as changing the oil in your car and then
pouring it down your sink at home. I think handmade is an important
distinction, it denotes that someone put a lot of personal time and
effort into something. However, simply because I created my art on a
computer and used a local small business to create my product, I don't
think it should be considered any less worthy. There are very good
reasons I did so, but it can be hard to get people to listen to the
reasons why. Maybe someday Krmbal will grow so large that I can purchase
my own small, local screen print shop and can create responsibly on all
my own equipment. Until then, I'm perfectly happy helping to give a
small bit of work to my local printer.

Fantastic article! I seriously learned a LOT about the indie-apparel community. I am ashamed to admit I was on the "psht, its not handmade!" bandwagon. Thanks Cody and Tessa for opening my eyes! And good on you, Tessa!! Love your designs!

I didn't realize how much went on behind the scenes with apparel printing. I think Tessa's designs are smart and hip (I especially like the Tesla one!). Looking forward to seeing what designs you come up with as you grow your biz--fantastic feature!

Thanks for all these comments, ladies :) I'm glad I could get the word out! Also, if you're ever interested, check the Sustainability tag down at the very bottom of my blog page - I have posts on stuff I've researched like what kinds of textiles are best and an intro to my article on ink systems, etc www.krmbal.com/blog